An interview with Nancy Snow, author of Propaganda, Inc. and Information War

By Steven Robert Allen

His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed. Even to understand the word "doublethink" involved the use of doublethink.

Being lied to sucks. Bankrolling the production of lies with our own tax dollars really sucks. But mendacity, unfortunately, seems to be the preferred political tactic when the Bush administration promotes its policies, brushing off each lie as if it were just a joke.

1. Truth is not the absence of propaganda; propaganda thrives in presenting different kinds of truth, including half-truths, incomplete truths, limited truths, out of context truths. Modern propaganda is most effective when it presents information as accurately as possible. The Big Lie or Tall Tale is the most ineffective propaganda.